"Whenever you imagine other people as greedy, hateful, or in any way despicable, these qualities become the objects of your own mind, and, in effect, you are mixing your mind with a low type of consciousness.

Imagining your companions as extraordinary is, thus, a technique for enriching your own mind. It is not groundless imagination, for our present ordinary views of companions and objects are largely creations of our own thought. For example, a room fashioned from unpainted cement blocks and lit by fluorescent tubes is unappealing to us. Yet, if visitors from a poor country entered such a room, they might be filled with admiration.Their delight would belie our sense that ANYONE who saw such a room, would regard it as we do. This sense derives from our misconception that the room is ugly in and of itself, irrespective of the consciousness that views it.

Until we recognize the mind as the actual perpetrator of impressions it is difficult not to be overcome by appearances. "